Google to Expand Workforce at European Headquarters by 75 percent over next few years
In a major overseas expansion, Google is adding up to 700 jobs in Ireland, more than doubling employment at a Dublin office serving Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Dublin center, Google’s biggest non-U.S. office, includes customer service, advertising sales, finance and other operations.
Google announced the office last year, noting at the time that workers there came from 35 nations and spoke 17 languages — "imperative for doing business across Europe." Google credited the high caliber of European university graduates available and Ireland’s unusually low corporate tax rate with influencing its decision.
The online search giant’s push would boost Google’s overall workforce by 14%, quickening the pace of its transformation into a multinational.
Google declined to comment on reports of the expansion first published by Irish media Finfacts Ireland and The Sunday Business Post Online.
USA TODAY confirmed the reports with a person who has been briefed on the announcement but who would not speak for the record because of an agreement with Irish government officials who are yet to announce the details.
A recent Google filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the company had reduced its tax rate from about 39 percent in 2004 to 31 percent through the first nine months of 2005 thanks primarily to its ability to credit profits to its new Irish operations. Ireland’s corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent, compared to 35 percent in the United States.
John Herlihy, Google’s European director of online sales and operation, said Google had signed a lease to acquire another 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters) of office space besides its existing Dublin building.
Basing our European operations here in Dublin has proven to be a great decision, Herlihy said. We have found that the quality of the Irish work force has enabled us to improve our products and services in a way that has proven to be highly beneficial for our customers, both users and advertisers.
Ireland’s minister for enterprise, trade and employment, Micheal Martin, declined to specify how much financial aid was being provided by the Investment and Development Agency, which is responsible for wooing multinational companies to Ireland.
Hundreds of high-tech businesses from North America and continental Europe have established operations in Ireland over the past decade of the nation’s Europe-leading economic growth. Unemployment now stands at an EU-low 4.3 percent, and many of Google’s workers are recruited from other European countries.
Google is on a hiring tear when many other tech companies are scaling back. Started seven years ago, it now has about 5,000 employees vs. 2,700 a year ago. Of the 700 job openings on its website, about 25% already are for Dublin.
Google’s Dublin expansion reflects broader trends affecting the company and the U.S. economy, including:
Allure of Tax Incentives
Ireland has been drawing thousands of jobs, especially from U.S. pharmaceutical firms, with low corporate tax rates.
Google told investors last spring that its effective tax rate beginning in the first quarter is expected to be "significantly lower" than the 39% effective tax rate paid last year.
That is mostly because proportionally more of its earnings are expected from its Irish subsidiary, according to Google’s annual 10K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such lower rates are expected for the "foreseeable future," it says.
Google’s profits are rising even faster. Through the first nine months of this year, Google earned $1.1 billion more than fivefold improvement from the same juncture last year.
Global Start-ups
Many young tech ventures are creating jobs overseas from the start, bypassing the traditional route of adding jobs in the USA before moving them offshore, where labor is cheaper and more plentiful.
Nearly 40% of young tech start-ups in a USA TODAY study this year employed engineers, marketers, analysts and others in jobs created overseas, speeding the pace of corporate globalization.
This decision yet again demonstrates that Ireland is by far and away the primary location for the digital media industry in Europe, and second only to Silicon Valley in the U.S., Martin said.
Google hired its first foreign employees just three years after its 1998 launch in a Silicon Valley garage.
Google’s Irish jobs section can be reached at: http://www.google.ie/jobs
The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., now has about two dozen foreign offices. It does not give a breakdown of overall employment by geography.